


You have witchcraft in your lips

by middlemarch



Series: Plum dimension [4]
Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Cat, Doctors & Physicians, F/M, Gen, Gossip, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 11:56:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7314271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jed cannot decide where the truth lies. Plum doesn't help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You have witchcraft in your lips

Jed hadn’t paid attention at first. There was always some gossip or other making the rounds at the hospital, as if it were a companion to lice and dysentery. It was human nature—he recognized the pattern from the small community of plantation owners he’d grown up with, the other students at the university, even the sober physicians he’d worked with at the Baltimore Infirmary. The need to talk, to comment on your fellow man, seemed as intrinsic to most people as a dog’s bark, the purr that Mary’s little calico made as she sat before the fire. That sound had always meant contentment to him, but now he wondered whether Plum, for so Mary had named her, was recounting the many slights of her day or telling the flames of her most grievous suspicions.

Well before Mary had arrived and started making the place more an actual hospital and less a teaming charnel house, busy as a brothel on pay day, there had been rumors and speculation at Mansion House. They ebbed and flowed with the pace of battles, the strange combinations of men that could bring distant cousins to lie beside each other. Boys who’d been sworn enemies at home might tenderly look after each other while yet the elder brother might turn his face from the younger, convinced of some dishonorable failing in battle or even the theft of dear mother’s last package of cakes. Anne Hastings had been the unofficial Head Nurse when he’d begun to work at the hospital but she’d done little to establish standards of any kind though Jed would admit she was quite competent in caring for the men individually. He’d often found himself wishing she was the other surgeon and not Hale, that dullard; she had a sharp eye to match her tongue and a quick wit. Something was curdled in her heart or soul though, he couldn’t say what, just knew it was so. 

As he’d fallen into the needle’s thrall, he’d paid less attention to what transpired on the wards and the hallways, the warren below. He could collect himself for surgeries and his rounds and those first hours after the latest injection he almost felt like the Jed of his university days, but as for the rest—the edges blurred around everything. The men’s stumps could melt into the heavy air, the stairs climbed endlessly. Even the oak-slatted chair he sat in might give way. Within himself, he’d felt the reverse, the blood solid in his veins, his ventricles’ struggle to throw off great, dark clots. It was after he came through the withdrawal, after Mary delivered him, a great breech she’d wrenched free, that he began to see how she had changed the hospital—and what therein she could not.

He and Summers had railed at Mary’s arrival. Hale’s rejection had been more perfunctory as the man truly hoped to be served a great garlanded feast of spanferkel, even after Mary had been so clearly not the Teutonic hausfrau they’d envisioned. Jed admitted life at Mansion House had improved steadily since Mary had taken the reins. Indeed, to continue to complain about her or disparage her work, as Hale and Hastings were wont to do, seemed only evidence of Hale’s petty stupidity or in Hastings’s case, her overweening pride and jealousy. All that could be made cleaner, simpler, neater had been; the surgical instruments shone if they were able and lay in neat rows when he went to operate. The cloth beneath them was unwrinkled and bleached white as the laundresses’ boiling cauldrons could conjure. There was always a fresh basin of water and a folded towel ready for his soiled hands or to wipe his face afterwards. Nurse Hastings had made sure every bandage was rolled and once applied, the strips were perfect as a mummy’s, ready to last a thousand years. She hadn’t cared for administration or the domestic chores that once addressed properly made Mansion House tolerable.

Mary, aided always by stalwart Samuel, made sure there were meals to suit the ill men and the overtaxed officers. The linens were changed in rotation, so they wore evenly and there were fewer boys tangled in dank sheets in the far corners of the wards. The floors were swept and the walls were scrubbed, usually by Mary herself; he’d often found her at odd times with a bucket and rag and an expression of determination and not a little disgust at the dried gouts of blood painted upon the walls. By-and-by, the place regained some of its past calm charm if not its extravagant luxury. Mrs. Green’s favorite yellow silk portieres would never again hang on the entry to the library or the parlor and even Mary, with her New England dedication, couldn’t repair the rose embroidered footstools shredded by the general use. When a battle was newly ended and they tried to endure the influx of wounded men, or when illness swept the wards, filling the air with the confused moans of men in fever, it was difficult to appreciate Mary’s order. As the onslaught receded, the men were more easily soothed and the cool breath of morning could fill the hallways. Peace was eager to return.

At the end of the day now, the plain supper eaten at a table spread with a white cloth and set with as much matching cutlery as was at hand, Jed and Summers, Hale and McBurney might retire to the worn armchairs and sofa. The low table before the sofa was laid with cups, saucers, the coffee-pot full, and nearly always, some little sweet on a scalloped china dish. How Mary contrived it, with only molasses most days or even sorghum for sweetening, Jed couldn’t explain, but the dessert was always fresh and light and good. The pastry’s edges were a proper golden-brown and the tops of the cakes glittered with little sugar, emphasizing the indulgence. The scent of butter or allspice or lemon recalled the time before the War-- each man’s memory of a parlor, the woman who had served him then, the regular chime of the clock, everything that was missing now. Mary played mother most nights, pouring out each cup deftly, adding milk and sugar as each man requested it. Jed had not had to ask twice. The second night she had presented him with his cup exactly as he liked it and she had not smiled as she handed it to him. It was as naturally done as the ordering of the scalpels to his preference, the way the window of his room was now opened to the night, pale starlight and the rustle of aspen pouring through the casement. He had held the saucer with her when she offered it, a beat longer than she expected, so she would know how he noticed and what he thought it was worth. 

Mary had a way of sitting quietly among the officers, her hands busy with sewing or some writing, exuding a sense of homely industry or a modest womanly intelligence, that made her a general favorite. Hastings, try as she might, could never master it and either drew all the men’s eyes or their sighs or their politely contained ire with her sly chatter or bombastic monologues. If the Crimea were swallowed in a great disaster, sunk into the depths to be visited only by leviathan, not one officer, even Hale, could muster any dismay. There was only one small compensation Jed allowed; when Hastings began her nightly discourse on dear Florence or foul Scutari, Mary would gaze at him and raise her eyebrows so delicately, the moment intimate and particular. Her mouth was shaped just for his kiss. He could hardly bear to look but he could not bear to look away. The others only saw what they expected, Nurse Mary’s attentive glance as Nurse Hastings rambled on and they were all the fonder of Mary for it. Summers had stopped lamenting spanferkel, schweinsbraten, and apfelstrudel long since, though he’d been making some noise about the appeal of Boston baked beans “or even a slice of rhubarb pie, that would go over a treat or a nice Indian pudding, eh?”

It seemed Mary was a favorite of the patients as well. She had a smile for every man and somehow remembered each one’s Christian name. He could tell she was still uncomfortable around the Confederates, but she was polite and kind even if she couldn’t muster a true warmth for men who glowered at her as she changed their dressings. One Reb had tried to spit on her but had been too close to death to achieve his goal; she’d only wet his dry mouth with a cloth and let him hate her as he died, the loathing slow to burn out of his dulled eyes. The man beside the dead boy had apologized then, ashamed of his countryman, and she’d thanked him but dismissed the concern, “it must be easier to hate on this earthly plane than to face the final accounting with a heart so heavy.” But that boy had been the anomaly. Mary walked among the men lightly and a vainer woman would have basked in the attention, but she was always attending to this task and the next, this request, this letter, this cry for mother. 

Once a solider, a man grown, not a boy too young to fight, had called for Jed as he made his rounds. He was prepared to address the outcome of the surgery, the need for more quinine or morphine, the question of the latest battle, but all the man asked was, “Dr. Foster, have you seen Nurse Mary this hour? Would you kindly ask her to come by when she is able?” Jed had nodded, a quick nod of assent, but his surprise must have been evident, for the man offered “I know she is busy, but she’s such a comfort, Nurse Mary, she puts me so much in mind of my Nell at home, she knows how a man may be lonely here I reckon.” Yes, Mary understood loneliness, how it beset a man and bullied him, knocked him down or kept him separate from his fellows. Then she would find a way, always just suited to the situation, to ease the distance.

He made his rounds morning and afternoon, before the first surgery and after the last. On a rainy forenoon, he was entirely taken aback when he found the soldiers arguing from their beds, their tones suggesting the dispute was of significant duration, to discover that Mary was the subject. She was in another ward, writing letters for some farm boys who were nearly illiterate; he was unsure who could read them when they arrived, but she would persevere and she wrote a fine hand. Perhaps it would be consolation enough to the mother to see her son’s name written so elegantly.

“She is, I tell you, you’ve only to look, boyo! Are ye blind then? Or ye can’t see more than the fine shape of her, that’s so,” said the fair man with an unfinished look about his face, likely no more than nineteen. O’Malley, Jed thought, the humerus broken twice. He hadn’t realized how pale the man was with the filth of battle washed from him.

“How can ye say it? For never was there such a kind woman, such a Christian woman, and I think Father Byrne would throw you from the church himself if’n he heard what you were sayin’!” That was McNamara, black Irish they called it, that sooty hair without any shine, his skin dusky, eyes dark as peat. His voice was strong and he was making a better recovery than Jed had imagined; the man had nearly died on the table. Mary had sat up with him that whole night, borrowed a jet rosary from Sister Catherine and had prayed over him till he slept more easily. What she had prayed, Jed couldn’t say; it was impossible to escape the nuns and their litanies and certain phrases, “mystical Rose” or “tower of ivory,” had become lodged in his own mind but perhaps she had learned the complete ritual. He knew she was Unitarian but she had a remarkable flexibility when it came to the depths of suffering; he suspected she would have joined the Hebrew and the Musulman in their devotions if they lay ill in her ward.

“Now, now. What’s all this?” Jed asked. McNamara had a long road ahead of him and it didn’t do to let any argument become too heated. The rooms were over-crowded and anger and spite proved as contagious as cholera and just as hard to treat.

“’Tis nothing, Dr. Foster, nothing to trouble yourself over,” began McNamara when O’Malley interrupted.

“Oh, ‘tis nothing we’re tended by a witch? For that she is and make no mistake!”

“What preposterous nonsense is this?” Jed exclaimed. “Are your wits addled, man? Did you strike your head since I operated on your arm? Nurse Mary a witch?”

“It’s as I said, Dr. Foster, nothing to pay any mind to,” McNamara tried again. 

“Well, then, explain that cat that follows her about like a shadow, always lurking about her skirts but it makes a mighty hissing if you try to set down even the smallest scrap for it. Or how she’s always in that closet brewing those infernal potions. Why, she even says things no man can rightly understand while she does it, I heared her, sounds sweet as anything but she may be calling old Satan himself down upon us, afore she doses us up,” O’Malley burst out. Jed truly thought the man was starting a fever; his cheeks were red and he’d rarely seen a man so excitable.

“I dunno why you’re in such a fuss, O’Malley, anyone can see Nurse Mary’s a white witch, only does such spells for our betterment,” Rourke, a scrappy man with red hair upon his head and even more notable auburn whiskers at his jaw and chin, interjected. Jed shook his head in disbelief. “Jackie’s right, a kinder woman never lived, or have you forgotten how she wrote those letters to your mam and your sisters after she’d cleaned you up from the stink of your own vomit? Well, I haven’t and neither should you, nor how she brought Thompson round just laying on her hands or Jess Armitage. He’d the death rattle, for certain, and then a dose from her bottle and her hand on his brow and he slept easy for the first time in four days. And so did all of us without his hackin’ and hollerin’,” Rourke concluded.

“Soldiers, if I can call you that, leave off this-- this utter balderdash, or I shall be forced to diagnose you all with imbecility and there is no asylum near for me to ship you off to!" Jed said. A witch! A white witch even, as if degree mattered! He couldn’t have conceived that in the year 1862, men would still be talking of witches and potions. The idea that practical, sensible Mary, with her fondness for mathematics and stolid German philosophy, was in her little kitchen singing incantations over otherworldly possets beggared imagination. And Plum her familiar? Even Nurse Hastings had not thought to cast that aspersion. 

He glared at the men and they looked away, each a bit chastened, but he was not sure if they would refrain from the argument or turn right back to it, Rourke again declaring “There’s no bother about a white witch, why, all they want is to do some healing, fix things up around them. Me granny was a white witch and didn’t the neighbors love her for it, the children shook off their fevers faster and she could see any cow through her travail and never lose the calf!” Would O’Malley start to nod along, growing convinced that Mary meant to cure him with a spell or would the man spout even more unsavory imprecations? Would the next time Jed overhear him speaking lewdly of “a fine pair of diddies in a pinafore, that’s all you care for, McNamara!” and have to proceed against him as Captain Foster through the military’s channels? He would need to keep watch as the Executive Officer.

A few days past, then a week. As he thought was likely, the trio who’d brought the speculation to his attention simmered down. O’Malley was sent home instead of back to the front, his arm too weak to ever to load a gun again. McNamara lingered but for a man Jed had expected to die, he did remarkably well. Yet, Jed thought the talk of Mary being a witch was not extinguished, just less troublesome as the assertion she was a white witch appeared to have taken hold of the shifting population of Mansion House. Jed found himself, of an evening when the shadows were falling, or when he made early rounds to check on the sickest men, considering the idea. At first, it had caused a outraged disapproval, then wry amusement at the foibles of men, but now, now he wondered though he was embarrassed to admit it, he who’d styled himself a man of science first and foremost.

It was after Templeton survived and Carruthers and Boyd that he began to entertain the notion. All three he had operated on and felt sure they would not last the night. He’d thought Boyd would not breathe past noon on that sunless day in late autumn and had thought it was a sorry end for a man who’d been so courteous and grateful as the chloroform was applied. And yet, all three were now recovering and he had seen Mary beside them, her hand against a brow, holding a wrist, deep in concentration with such a gentle look upon her face. Except when he had stepped closer, to ask how Templeton fared, she’d glanced at him, unseeing for a moment. Her dark eyes were fierce and abstracted, Hippolyta with a stained pinafore for her girdle. He thought to the nights he had struggled to throw off the morphine’s clawing hold. The sweat and tears had run down his face and Mary had only wiped his eyes, his cheeks with a damp cloth. She had said very little but had brushed the hair back from his face, her fingers callused and considerate. In the endless wrenching grasp of nausea vomiting could not relieve, there had been the cool touch of her hand at the back of his neck, the only thing that was something like pleasure. There had been her arms and her breast and the sweet smell of her throat when he collapsed back against her, exhausted and sore from retching, and she had sung to him “Du bist die Ruh, der Friede mild” until sleep allowed him in. The next day, he had woken and been hungry and had wanted to read his letters again. Mary had told him as she left the room of Hale’s unfortunate encounter with a patient’s clenched fist during an exam, how Hale had gone down like a great ninepin and shouted he was well from the floor. It was the first time Jed had laughed in over a month.

He could not discount what the wards told. Cadwallader’s arm healed despite the raging abscess. McGovern woke from delirium. Simpson, whom he feared had gone mad, his brain irrevocably scrambled within its pan, had begun to string together small words, “want” and “bread” and “home,” in a way that suggested healing was beginning in the tiniest way, a blade of grass that might become a waving meadow. Mary had given them each an herbal decoction of her own making, sweetened with honey if she had it. Plum had become Simpson’s own sentinel. He thought how the men had cheered up and down the rows when Simpson called out “This cat wants her milk, someone must see to it at once!” Could it be that Mary had a hand in it? Science abhorred suspicion but both hypothesis and presentiment occupied him.

He came upon Mary in her little kitchen and heard her murmuring as she mixed some fragrant tonic—he smelled peppermint and rosemary, maybe sage. Chamomile was dried in bunches, the white petals shriveled, little gold centers like a London guinea struck into shards. He saw the mortar and pestle had been put to use and steam rose from a battered kettle on an iron trivet. He listened and could not make out what she was saying as O’Malley had alleged; it seemed to be some jumble of Latin perhaps and High German but he struggled to understand the content. Mary was too quick, too bright, her words too different from the low country drawl of his childhood. She was content at this work, he could hear it in her voice as she seemed almost to be singing, a strange Lied of questionable purpose. He determined to be a scientist and investigate.

“Mary, what are you doing?” he asked softly, not wishing to startle her. She turned towards him easily, one hand still stirring the contents of the pot.

“Can’t you see? I’m making some medicines for the boys, this one’s a strengthening tonic but Lewis needs a poultice too, I think. Is there another boy you’re worried about? Or do you need me to leave off and assist you? It will only take a moment, then I may let this steep and it will only help, though I may need to add another spoonful of honey to get the boys to take it,” she said.

“No, no, I don’t need anything in particular. Only, I didn’t mean to intrude, but when I came in, you were reciting something? Or singing? I couldn’t make it out, you have awakened my curiosity,” Jed said. She was the picture of domesticity in her dark dress and white apron, her cuffs and collar so neat.

Mary laughed. “Your curiosity sleeps? I can hardly credit it. Well, then, Jedediah, since you must know, this work can be a bit tedious and I find it passes the more quickly when I try to remember things which once were my daily companions.”

Jed waited. She had still not told him anything. 

“Still not satisfied I see. Dear me, well, I like to recall Gauss’s _Disquisitiones Arithmeticae_ , especially the chapter on binary and ternary quadratic forms. So brilliant, do you know it? He wrote it in Latin, so I practice sometimes, like a catechism, it’s silly I know, I translate it into German. Unnecessary and perhaps you think it is unwomanly, but there you have it-- a Boston bluestocking combatting the kitchen’s boredom,” she offered. Under her humorous tone, he heard that she expected a critique or remonstration.

He felt an unusual sense of shame as she explained. It was not enough that she had devised helpful medicines to augment the limited stores they had of morphine and quinine, but he had somehow believed she was using magic to imbue the tonics with some astral power when she was only exercising her impressive intellect within the bounds Society allowed. That is, she must restrict herself to whispering alone, in a kitchen frequented only by herself and a freeman, a translation of a mathematical text he himself could hardly understand, from the formal Latin of the chapter to her adopted German.

“No, Mary, I’m the one who should beg your pardon for this inquisition and interruption,” he began. He wished he was carrying something, there was no place to put his hands that did not make a suggestion he didn’t mean.

“Jedediah Foster, begging pardon? Perhaps I should dose you next, a milk posset with a hearty dose of black pepper to raise your spirits. Alas, we’ve no milk left, at least none that’s not turned and ready for clabber, and I did so wish to save the pepper for the mutton tonight, it needs something if we’re all to do more than choke it down,” she replied, enjoying her jest.

“I’ll leave you then, and behave myself better so we may all be satisfied with tonight’s meal,” he said. She gave him a nod then, so smartly, then turned to pour the kettle into the mixing bowl. He felt a frisson, the urge to walk back to her and spin her about so she was in his arms. He wanted her hands free of any work but to touch his face and his shoulders as he kissed her soft mouth again and again until she laughed in delight as she had just a few minutes before. She seemed to sense he was caught in some way and tossed over her shoulder, “Hurry along now, Jedediah, else your work will make you late for your supper and you may have Dr. Hale as your dining companion!”

He worked late in any case that night, an emergency surgery on Private Quincy necessary to save the man from an unexpected hemorrhage, and again the next and the next. Mary seemed to be always about and yet never had a moment to speak with him alone; at best, she assisted him during the flurry of surgeries as one man after another struggled with complications. The pressure of the work without the precursor of a battle was a burden he was unprepared for and he found by the third night, he was too tired to sleep.

Mary found him at his desk, writing up the surgical notes of the day, now more necessary as a reminder to himself of what he had done to whom and why and how. He was finishing when she knocked and he bade her enter.

“It’s late, Jedediah, you need to rest now,” she said without a by-your-leave or the careful politeness he might have anticipated.

“There’s just a little left,” he said. Should he take her to task for her care? He could not.

“It’s enough, lay your pen down. Nothing you write now will aid you tomorrow in any case, you can’t be thinking clearly, it’s near eleven and you have been up since four,” Mary insisted.

“Still, I should try,” Jed replied. His bed beckoned as it repelled him. He had slept little the past few nights and the prospect of lying there, uneasy, and rising unrefreshed, his dreams all nightmare, made him wish to drop in the chair and wake with the imprint of the pen upon his cheek.

Mary walked right up to him then and took the pen from his hand and set it down. He sat back in the chair, a little wooden prison, and regarded her with some surprise. Next, would she put her hands on her hips and scold like a fishwife? The touch of her hand on the bare skin of his wrist was a direction, a thrill and a comfort. He felt his pulse leap.

“You need to rest, you need your sleep to ‘knit up the ravell’d sleeve of care.’ I know you have not had good nights lately, but tonight I think you will, if only you will lie down now. I will send an orderly round in the morning if you wish. Please, my--” Mary said earnestly. He was almost too tired to wonder what she meant to say but she had been up the same number of hours and had worked just as hard. He should go to his room and try to sleep, even if he failed, so she might retire to her spare little room and rest herself. He nodded and walked to ahead to his room, knowing she would follow along if she saw his lamp rising up the staircase.

He prepared for bed quickly, merely splashing his face with a little water from the china basin and pulling on a clean nightshirt. His clothes were haphazardly draped on an armchair in the corner of the room. He thought Mary would be mistaken and he would lie awake, reviewing the day’s surgeries, what he must watch for in the men tomorrow, trying to recall the procedure Durand had tried on the half-blind man that might help the New Jersey boy with the burned face.

Was it suggestion or exhaustion or something else? He couldn’t wonder for he slept. And he dreamt. He woke into the dream, confused at the candlelight all around him, for surely he had blown out his lamp. There she was beside him, wearing her nightdress or her chemise, he couldn’t make it out as he was occupied nearly entirely with her fingers stroking his cheeks, below his eyes and past the margin of his beard. Her dark eyes were so affectionate and, he perceived, determined.

“But how are you here, Mary?” he asked. Her hair was unbound. He hadn’t known it would curl so around her forehead. It fell in long waves over her shoulders and down her back. He felt his desire like the sun burning off a cloud. Her hands smelled like thyme and lavender. 

“Still so curious, Jedediah. Haven’t you told me how resourceful the mind is, how little we know of it? I wish you would only let me be here with you, in this bed, only we two alone,” she replied. His Mary, in the candlelight, entreating him…

“Yes, your Mary,” she said and she pulled his face towards her, to kiss him on the mouth. She was irresistible, softly curved and eager, so eager for him, not a hint of diffidence. Whatever tether there was to day was broken, he could not have spelled his wife’s name, she was less than a stranger to him in this night country. There was only Mary, the sweetest woman, holding fast to him, reaching for him, tasting him. Every sound she made clarified her approval, fondness, desire…

“I **love** you, love you, oh my dearest,” she called to him and he was unleashed, freedom leading to liberties. His hand upon her cheek dropped to feel the weight of her breast in his palm, the lovely flare of her hip through the nightdress he only wanted gone. He wanted nothing tangled between them, only to feel her skin under his hands, to rub his face between her full breasts, against the softness of her belly, the elegant architecture of her ribs. She reached in the open collar of his nightshirt and stroked his neck where it met his shoulder and sighed so voluptuously, then moved to pull the linen over his head. He looked down at her and saw her dark eyes all aglow, the knowing tenderness of a widow and still the delighted revelation of an innocent bride.

“The buttons, Jedediah,” she said and he saw the nightdress seemed to have an infinite number of little pearl buttons. With each he slipped free, it seemed there were two, three, four more among the ribbons, that he would never find the end to it until the dream turned, shifted and the linen was in his grasp and Mary smiled up at him.

“Such clever hands,” she said. He would have basked in the praise but there she was, delicious and lovely, everything good, and he was enchanted by her. 

“ _Da mi basia mille, deinde centum,/ Dein mi altera, dein secundum centum,/ Deinde usque altera mille_ ,” she recited, but it was not a recitation at all. It was an appeal and she was his brilliant Mary, her mind ingenious and graceful; she knew how to remind him exactly why he loved her so, more than her winsome dark eyes, her deft hands, the warm silk of her thighs.

“Won’t you come to me now?” she asked as she drew him to her, all welcome as she parted her legs for him. He had been hard since he’d twined one long chestnut ringlet around his finger and let it fall back upon her bare shoulder. There were no more questions, he had only to answer her and he did. He felt the first stroke around his cock, upon his heart, within his mind at once; everything was righted within him.

“Christ! Oh Mary, you—you feel so, I’ve never… my beautiful girl, I love you, oh how I love you, God!” he cried out softly, the heat of her and the consuming joy of her flesh making each movement unrestrained satisfaction. She was his dearest, his darling, his most beloved and she only drew him closer and closer, sobbed into his ear “Oh yes, oh yes, my love, oh my Jedediah, I want you, always, always, oh love!”

Had a woman ever taken her pleasure so nakedly with him before? It was remarkable, Mary was transfigured, flushed and giddy with tears in her eyes. He tasted them on her lips. He moved swiftly, almost fierce except that she was murmuring to him, gentle little sounds coaxing him, her hands tight on his hips. He felt the finely cut pressure of her ankles at his calves, the hum of another beguiling “yes, Jedediah, oh yes” from her throat against his cheek, and he spent. Her hands moved to rest on his slick back, his face pressed to her neck. He was drowsy, his mind lazily cataloging her in their aftermath: the rich rose of her nipples, the ripe shadow at her clavicle, how contentedly she breathed in the scent of their coupling. She seemed dozy too, yet still more alert than he, for she touched him at the temple with her fingertips, fondled his tousled curls and he heard her, lulling them both.

“My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies.”

Then in the dream he slept suddenly in their bed, and he slept soundly the whole night through alone in his bed. He woke when the sun was bright in the windows. There was a sound of footsteps in the hall, passing by his door and then away after a little pause he might not have noticed. He did. His nightshirt lay at the foot of the bed atop the blankets and the sheet was rucked up; he’d spilled in the night with the dream, like a boy, a young boy dreaming of his first love, but he couldn’t find it in himself to be ashamed or even abashed. Jed thought of the night and thought he would feel embarrassment and chagrin, the prospect of seeing Mary in her sober dress and braided hair mortifying but he simply did not. His mind supplied explanation, sought science as a framework for the mysteries of sleep, but it was primarily that he felt exceptionally well, sustained and happy. It was something less than euphoria but something like it, easier to keep. The sunshine poured through the window onto him, honey and gold and the heart of a white rose, the yellow stripe of Plum’s fur.

The day was blessed it seemed. Each man he’d cut the day before showed no sign of infection. Indeed, there was hardly any fever on any of the wards. He caught sight of Plum now and then, prancing prettily about the hallways, and not one orderly cursed to see her. Anne Hastings assisted on all his cases, but she was subdued and deferential without her usual obsequiousness; when he performed Durand’s procedure, making an adjustment here and there as he saw fit, she was silent until it was clear the eyelid would open now and the boy’s mouth. Then she exclaimed “Well done, Dr. Foster! I’ve never seen the like” and hurried to clean the instruments and settle the boy back in his bed with fresh dressings, “for surely, you’ve done enough today, four surgeries and saving a boy’s sight!” There was an absence of her general braggadocio and pointed slyness, she was actually quite pleasant to operate with and he decided to enjoy this other Nurse Hastings instead of wondering where she went most other days.

The officers’ dining room was quite nearly empty when he arrived after writing up the modifications to Durand’s procedure; there were so many he thought it might merit its own eponym, Foster’s trigeminal procedure, lately revised. It sounded quite well. McBurney had sat with him a few minutes while he ate the meal left for him, the portion ample for the time of night. Mary had not used all the sage in her tonic and it gave a subtle flavor to the hearty stew, the gravy rich even without wine. He and McBurney talked a little, mostly McBurney’s review of the day liberally interspersed with commendations for Jed’s successes and a few updates on some administrative changes which were likely to make the hospital run more efficiently with no extra effort from the medical staff.

“Good night to you then, Foster. Fine work today, how lucky we are to have an Executive Officer with such impressive surgical acumen. I can’t think of a hospital better staffed,” McBurney said and clapped Jed on the shoulder before he strode from the room. 

Jed set the plate aside and sat back in his chair. Mary came in then with a tray, just a cup and saucer and a dish with a little white cloth folded beside it, and put it down on the table. She moved the cup, filled with fresh hot coffee, towards him and placed the bowl squarely in front of him. It was a baked apple, the red skin split, the white flesh redolent with allspice and nutmeg, perhaps a few plump raisins, and the whole was splashed about with cream. He couldn’t remember the last time there had been cream at Mansion House.

“What is this, Mary?” he asked with undisguised pleasure. She wore a dark grey dress today and it seemed as if her face was set off by twilight’s shadows. Her cheeks were rosy and she had a light in her dark eyes.

“It is your dessert, of course. ‘Comfort me with apples,’” she replied. He felt a shock as for a moment he saw her again beneath him, her red lips parted as she panted in elation, her firm thigh raised against his flank, his cock deep in her sweet quim. He took a breath that tried not to be a gasp; it was the first failure of the day. 

“Yes, well then, I mustn’t waste it, you’ve gone to such trouble,” he said, trying to regain himself. He hoped he looked only properly appreciative but he couldn’t resist grinning at her.

“It’s never any trouble, but yes, you should have it now. Consider it a reward for a fine day’s work, you’re all anyone can talk about, even Nurse Hastings has nothing but the most laudatory comments and all quite polite. It makes such a pleasant change,” Mary said. She moved to rise and he wanted to take her by the hand and tell her to stay, to sit beside him. He wanted to feed her bites of the apple and watch her face change with her enjoyment, so much milder than what he had dreamt but closer to what was allowed between them. He couldn’t understand how he still felt nothing but the most natural ease with her but that was the case. Something was at work today, everything had been coming together just as he would want it, only the most favorable outcome had seemed possible. Even Hale had not annoyed him.

As he had mused, Mary stood. She smoothed the apron over her skirt and had such a dear wifely air about her; he couldn’t regret his observation.

“You seem better rested today. I gather you slept well,” she said. He delighted in her self-satisfaction.

“Yes, I did, though I hadn’t thought to,” Jed replied.

“You were looking a bit… grey and pinched, your eyes-- I was worried for you,” she said. How careful she was but how she revealed herself!

“It seems you needn’t have, I’m perfectly fine now after a good night’s sleep.” What would she say, how would she look if she knew what he had dreamt? 

“‘What dreams may come,’” she said quietly. It approached being a question but she let the words stay between them without definition. Jed found himself thinking like a sick soldier alone on a long night-- she must be a witch. But she couldn’t be, there couldn’t be, not among the scalpels and the syringe. She pushed the chair in neatly and started to turn. He didn’t want her to leave, what was there left that could be said that would ensnare her?

“The men, there is a rumor you know, the men say you are a witch and Plum is your familiar,” he blurted out. After the morphine, alcohol held no allure and he never drank enough to get drunk, but Jed thought he sounded drunk, drunk and stupid, talking to her of witchcraft and rumors.

“Is that so?” she said dryly, raising her eyebrows. She was exquisite. He longed to jump up and take her in his arms and tell her so, to be able to take her to his bed and make love to her through the night, to wake bleary-eyed and joyous, to make her his wife.

“I spoke to them, quite sharply, but you know how they talk. I think they’re still saying it, that you are a witch, a white witch really, that you are casting spells,” he found himself saying. He was a fool and they both knew it but she was kind.

“I see,” she said. She paused a moment. What would she say? Or do? She could not, would not confess, clever, mathematical Mary, but he felt the pull of the occult, the ephemera that science had no accounting for.

“I wonder, shall you cast a spell upon me then?” he asked. It was a foolish question and she smiled at it, as he had wanted her to, but sometimes a Fool could be wise.

Mary looked at him and he knew she found him lovable, admirable, best suited to her as the companion of her heart, except for his wife and her grief, the War and the dying boys they had to try to save before they saved anything else. Jed caught sight of Plum; she flickered in the open doorway and her eyes shone like chalcedony in the half-light of the hallway, such a deliberate gaze and not even a meow to mar it.

“Perhaps I already have,” Mary replied. And she walked from the room, Plum finding her place beside her, one final glance thrown at him. The sarcenet sound of Plum’s purring followed them-- like smoke, like unquenched yearning, like an equation he could not begin to solve.

**Author's Note:**

> I basically invented the idea of this story in a comment in another story, talking about Mary and her cat, how someone might think she is witch!Mary. Then I thought, how fun to write a story where Jed is forced to face the rumors the men spread but also to consider whether Mary might truly be a witch. Also, I wanted to get them a little more "togetherness" than all the little touches to wrists and shoulders and I wanted Mary to be more aggressive but I didn't want to deal with Eliza in in great detail. So while I did rely on "it was only a dream," I did at least mix it up by making it unclear whether the dream was Jed's alone or whether Mary had bewitched him. 
> 
> The title is from Henry V by Shakespeare and Mary quotes Hamlet and Macbeth in the story.
> 
> The Latin is from Catullus--  
> Catullus 5 is a passionate ode to Lesbia and one of the most famous poems by Catullus. The poem encourages lovers to scorn the snide comments of others, and to live only for each other, since life is too brief and death brings on a night of perpetual sleep. Over the centuries, this poem has been translated and imitated many times; its sentiments seem timeless.
> 
> Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,  
> then another thousand, then a second hundred,  
> then yet another thousand, then a hundred
> 
> Mary quotes the Song of Solomon in the dream and when she serves Jed dessert:  
> The Song of Songs (Hebrew: שִׁיר הַשִּׁירִים, Šîr HašŠîrîm ; Greek: ᾎσμα ᾈσμάτων, Âisma Aismátōn), also known as the Song of Solomon, Canticles, or the Canticle of Canticles, is one of the "scrolls" (megillot) of the Writings (Ketuvim), the last section of the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible. It is also the fifth book of Wisdom in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. Scripturally, the Song of Songs is unique in its celebration of sexual love.
> 
> Du bist die Ruh' (English: You are rest), D. 776; Op. 59, No. 3 is a Lied composed by Franz Schubert (1797-1828) in 1823. The text is derived from a set of poems by German poet Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866). It is the third poem in a set of four. This song is set for solo voice and piano.
> 
> White witch and good witch are qualifying terms in English used to distinguish practitioners of folk magic for benevolent purposes (i.e. white magic) from practitioners of malevolent witchcraft or black magic. Related terms are "cunning-folk", "witch doctor", and the French devins-guérisseurs, "seer-healers".


End file.
